New Rules To Deter ‘Intentional Unauthorised Development’

In a bid to provide stronger protection for the green belt, and to reduce expensive and time consuming enforcement action, the government has announced a change to planning policy to make ‘intentional unauthorised development’ a material consideration in the determination of all new planning applications and appeals received after 31 August 2015.

The government’s chief planner, Steve Quartermain, has written to local authorities detailing the new policy, which is designed to make it harder to secure retrospective planning permission.  The policy statement also confirms that personal circumstances and unmet need are unlikely to outweigh harm to the green belt or establish the ‘very special circumstances’ required by the National Planning Policy Framework before any green belt development is considered.

The new policy is intended to protect land in the green belt from intentional unauthorised development.  It does, however, immediately raise the practical question of how easy will it be for enforcement officers to prove that an unauthorised development was undertaken ‘intentionally’.  If proving intent proves to be too onerous a task, it will obviously undermine the usefulness of the policy.

The government has confirmed that the Planning Inspectorate will monitor all appeal decisions involving unauthorised development in the Green Belt to enable it to assess the implementation of the policy.  In addition consideration will be given to the recovery of a proportion of relevant appeals in the green belt for the Secretary of State’s decision ‘to enable him to illustrate how he would like his policy to apply in practice’. This will all be reviewed after six months, so we will keep you updated.